BlawgWorld 2006 is a 112 page PDF report now available without registering for Technolawyer. This report profiling 52 law blogs came out in November 2005, and our own Steve Matthews’ blog Vancouver Law Librarian Blog is included. This report is a snapshot of some “best of” blog posts.

Thanks to a recent post from Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog for pointing this out. . . . [more]

Grazr is a product/service that lets you make an OPML file operational — which may not tell you very much. OPML stands for outline processor markup language, and it’s essentially a dialect of XML that, when opened in a sympathetic outliner program, displays your outline with collapse and expand functionality.

One of the main things it’s used for currently is the export and exchange of your RSS subscriptions. Feed readers “eat” (or should) OPML files, so I could bundle up all of my feed subscriptions and ship them to Steve or Connie or you, and you could plug them into . . . [more]

Our mental health is something we often neglect or try to ignore, despite increasing risks in our stressful modern lives. A pilot project spearheaded by the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario and a number of other health organizations is looking to increase awareness about our mental health with their website Check Up from the Neck Up, launched today.

The website features a diagnostic questionnaire which “funnels” the participant into additional questions to investigate possible areas of concern. The questionnaire was developed by the Department of Psychiatry at Sunnybrook and Women’s Health Sciences Centre which, incidentally, have divided as of . . . [more]

I posted recently about Y!Q, Yahoo’s “contextual search.” Well now there’s Google Related Links:

Google Related Links use the power of Google to automatically bring fresh, dynamic and interesting content links to any website. Webmasters can place these units on their site to provide visitors with links to useful information related to the site’s content, including relevant news, searches, and pages.

The idea’s the same: if you put the service on your site, certain words on your site will be accompanied by a small icon which leads to a set of links that are (one hopes) relevant to the . . . [more]

HigherEd BlogCon is a free online conference taking place from 3rd to 28 Apil with article, podcasts, and screencasts from presenters at 30 colleges and universities worldwide on the topic of “transformation academic communities with new tools of the social web.

There are 4 sessions: teaching; library and information resources; admissions, alumni relatinos, and communications & marketing; websites and webdevelopment.

It also has an RSS feed. . . . [more]

If somebody hurries, they still might be able to ask the first law question on
Questionville, which claims to be “the next generation of a social Question and Answers website”. My two favourite questions so far are Child Swallowing Cheerios Whole! Need Advice and Why can’t I have a Motorcycle?. . . . [more]

The role of the Lord Chancellor in the UK is undergoing changes, and there is a good summary of this on the BBC News website. Lord Phillips is now head of the judiciary, and soon the House of Lords will elect its own speaker for the first time. The title remains, but the role changes! . . . [more]

Fast after Westlaw’s new interface, developments on the statutory research front.

You have until Friday to experimentThe website claims that the service is free until April 7, but regular access to content charges will still apply. with a new way of organizing the legislative evolution of statutes: West has announced a Graphical Statutes service.

Graphical Statutes illustrates the evolution of a statute. It presents the big picture in an easy-to-read display that incorporates prior, current and future versions of a statute. Users can track changes in the law, as well as locate relevant legislative history materials for

According to today’s Star – that’s the Malaysian version – MyLawBox has launched

the first case law portal for Commonwealth nations. The portal is targeted at law firms, local and international businesses, law schools and their students, and covers countries often overlooked by such initiatives. The 11 countries whose laws and cases are covered at the website are Malaysia, Brunei, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The website offers trial cases, legislation and articles on the law from these countries.

Users will also be able to look up previous

Parliament resumed today, and Liberal MP for Kingston, Peter Milliken, was re-elected Speaker. From this afternoon’s CBC write-up:

It’s significant that all three candidates were Liberals. Speakers can only cast a vote when there is a tie in Parliament.

As a result, it’s not unusual for a minority government, which needs the vote of every one of its MPs, to ask that only members of the Opposition put their names forward for Speaker.

Meanwhile, constituents of MP David Emerson, who crossed the floor after the elections to become Cabinet Minister in the newly formed Harper government, were protesting:

Elsewhere,

We sometimes forget the impetuses that sparked our interest in the justice system. Two recent new items from the current debates about the limits of presidential power remind us of the importance of the lawyer’s independent judgment.

Remember Alberto Mora and John Dean.

A fine piece in the New Yorker about Alberto J. Mora, the current International Counsel for WalmartAlso see the New York Times and the Washington Post..

Mr Mora was General Counsel to the US Navy who raised concerns about the legality of the treatment of captives in a comprehensive memorandum laying out chapter and . . . [more]

The background to the Survey

There is some indication that the Supreme Court of Canada may be getting closer to permitting the publication of factums on Canlii. The CBA’s Supreme Court of Canada Liaison Committee meets annually with judges of the Supreme Court to discuss matters of Supreme Court practice. The Bar Committee is undertaking an informal canvass on the issue of whether it would be worthwile to post Supreme Court factums on a website after the conclusion of cases. It needs feedback from the Canadian legal community.

At a recent CBA/SCC Liaison Committee meeting on Posting of Factums on . . . [more]